buisness account,merchant banking,chip and pin help needed please...

sarah1

hi all
i hope this is the right place to ask my many questions about what i need and where are the best and cheapest of all the above..
right at the moment i have no buisness account but need 1 now, plus my accountant has advised me to sort out the facility of chip and pin to offer my customers.
i think im right in saying that i need :
a: buisness account
b: merchant account (do these hire you the chip and pin units ? )

my head is totally cabbaged at the moment with all of these things that i need to organise to enable me to accept credit/debit cards)

any advice gratefully accepted

sarah

Colin2511

you need to find a merchant provider - I use streamline and Protx, and then you can either hire the equipment if you have a shop or get VSP (on line), if you are website, take phone payments, for internet I need to have both moto (mail order telephone order), and web merchant numbers.

Protx charge £20 + vat per month to process my online payments, and streamline charge % of sale / price per transaction, how much depends on the deal you can get. Streamline and many others charge a set up fee, (usually £150), but you can get around this if you are a member of the FSB as this gets you free set up and cheaper monthly rates, (if you are not a member it is still worth joining just for this)

Hope that makes sense - should say Streamline process the card transactions, and put money in your account, Protx are the online equivilent of a card machine, so if you are a shop then you dont need this, but you will get charged approx £20 per month for rental of the machine

windswept

Abbey offer free business banking.
If you have no need for an internet merchant account for taking online payments, then the very cheapest option for taking face to face and phone payments is with a company called Adelante (mobile pos solution), £5 a month minimum fee + your processing fees with either Streamline, lloyds tsb cardnet, or one of the other aquiring banks (usually £150-ish set up fee).
I've used them for 8 months and it is a very simple system to use - they also have a chip and pin machine for £30 a month.
I have now outgrown the need for a face to face payment solution and have Streamline and secpay for my website, we no longer do events and shows as we haven't got the time anymore.
Hope this info is useful.